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Workplace Safety

Chemical manufacturers are in a race against time to fully implement the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS) with Hazard Communication. Implementation of the GHS, first proposed at the Rio “Earth Summit” in 1992, is finally underway. But there’s not much time to comply: OSHA has established that chemical manufacturers have until December 1, 2015 to be fully compliant with the new standards, which include new classifications and labels, reformatted safety data sheets (SDS), and necessary training for workers.

If you had $401 million, what would you buy? How about a satellite, a Picasso, and a roller coaster? Or space flights for you and 1600 of your closest friends? Maybe you could give a dollar to every man, woman, and child in the United States and then bankroll a movie about your generosity, starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Or, perhaps you could simply throw the money away.

Throughout the country, countless executives, medical directors, functional leaders, academics, associations, and stakeholders are committed to workplace health and safety initiatives. These professionals demonstrate a true conviction to protecting and promoting healthy employees. Some companies have implemented systems while others have developed metrics or used organizational alignment techniques to prove that integrated health and safety can help drive productivity and improve profitability.

I’ve been doing emergency response work since the mid-1980s, usually without the luxury of adequate time and resources, and often without a bed, food or sleep for days on end. I’ve dodged bullets, looters and rattlesnakes, worked 18-24 hours per day for weeks at a time and found out that you really don’t have to change clothes every week. I’ve been called a “feeder at the public trough” and a “guardian angel,” been cursed at in unrecognized languages and asked by a shy little girl in east Texas for my autograph. I have watched people die and been able to help save others, witnessed heroism and selflessness and endured bone-crushing stupidity. The front line of this work is real-time natural selection. It moves fast and is unforgiving.